Abstract
The possibilities and limits of economic knowledge are the timely subject matter of Christian Arnsperger's book. His central argument is that economics as a discipline has developed in such a way that it has lost its emancipatory potential. Arnsperger decries this loss and discusses ways that a new post-orthodox pluralism could be developed to recover its potential. To this end, rather than the pre-programmed automata of neoclassical economic analysis, individuals should be theorised as reflexive and critical actors in their own right and theorists themselves should acknowledge their role in the shaping of the political economy. This allows, Arnsperger hopes, for political economy as social study to become a constantly emerging, open-ended knowledge process.
Arnsperger draws on the thought of Friedrich Hayek, complexity theory and the Frankfurt School of social criticism in order to present his vision of post-orthodox pluralism. The attempt at (partial) unification of the right-libertarian thought of Hayek with that of the Marxist Horkheimer is one of the most ambitious and fascinating elements of the book. Essentially, Arnsperger argues that no single mind can comprehend the whole process and outcome of all social interaction, central to Hayek; nevertheless, concurrently one of the forces driving this very interaction is the desire on behalf of individuals to envisage and bring about a better society, central to Horkheimer. This fundamental point is well made and acts as a hook for much of what Arnsperger has to say.
The author acknowledges that his own training lies within the economics discipline, as does his primary intended audience. Nevertheless, Arnsperger is conversant with the history of economic thought and frames his pursuit in the tradition of wider political, philosophical and social inquiry. This plural approach to the study of political economic phenomena will appeal to many and mirrors other instances found in, for example, economic sociology and international political economy.
To reframe entirely the study of economics is an ambitious endeavour in the space of a single monograph, but Arnsperger is convincing in most of his specific arguments. A significant strength of the book is that the author does not present a homogeneous economics discipline but attempts to elucidate how his critique of contemporary economic knowledge applies not only to the neoclassical mainstream but also to the cutting edge of, for example, complexity economics. Together with the fact that the book is lucid and well structured this will strengthen the possibility of his framework being favourably received.
Chris Clarke
(University of Warwick)
David Boucher offers a comprehensive overview of the development of natural law, natural rights and human rights since Greek and Roman antiquity. The text illustrates and defends the following theses. First, the author asserts the conceptual closeness of natural law and natural rights. He distinguishes individualistic and rationalist natural rights from modern human rights. Whereas natural rights ‘never cast adrift the religious foundationalism’ (p. 357), their rootedness in Christian metaphysics, human rights are at the heart of a contemporary ‘foundationless’ human rights culture where it is assumed that we have certain rights, and the main focus is on what exactly they are and ‘what it means to have them’ (p. 282). Secondly, these rights turn out to be conditional and mostly special rights. Examples of (and chapters on) multicultural encounters, slavery and racism, and women's rights show that whenever so-called universal and inalienable rights were applied in specific historical contexts, they excluded groups that were seen as unfit to meet certain conditions. Third, Boucher tries to show that natural rights kept their close ties with a religious world view. Despite arguments to the contrary, authors like Grotius, Pufendorf or Locke did not ‘abandon God as the ultimate source of obligation’ (p. 75).
Finally and most importantly, Boucher wants to show that the British Idealists stood in an ‘intermediary position’ between natural and human rights (p. 246). They denied natural rights traditionally conceived, but asserted that they were natural in the sense of ‘fundamental to the social relations of a community'. Boucher works his way from Greek and Roman natural law theories to contemporary conceptions, putting special emphasis on the law of nations, cultural encounters, women and the critics of natural or human rights.
There are some shortcomings. I deplore the absence of Schneewind's study The Invention of Autonomy, as well as my own contribution to the debate (The Rights of Strangers). It seems odd that in a book on ethics and international relations, Smith and Kant and their respective theories of rights are not discussed. All in all, however, the book is an impressive achievement. In particular, Boucher's nuanced assessment of positions, the scope of his study and his sympathetic treatment of the British Idealists deserve to be mentioned.
Georg Cavallar
(University of Vienna)
The two books under review each propose to add to the debates about global justice a more sustained investigation of a relatively neglected topic – in the first case, historical injustice, and in the second, territorial justice.
Daniel Butt's book investigates the grounds on which claims for rectification of historical injustice might be made, whether by this we mean the return of purloined artefacts or compensation for ongoing wrongs such as colonialism or slavery. Butt does subscribe to some more or less egalitarian vision of global distributive justice, but for methodological reasons he does not develop its implications. Because the dominant approach to questions of justice beyond the nation state is rather ‘libertarian’ in form – in the sense that many citizens as well as political theorists are reluctant to move far beyond a general injunction against the exploitation of, or theft from, other countries – Butt sets himself the task of showing how even this more modest position may have significant redistributive implications.
Central to the argument is the claim that present generations who bear no direct responsibility for a historic injustice might nevertheless be perpetrating an injustice by neglecting to remedy it, and, indeed, continuing to benefit from it. Butt's cosmopolitan egalitarianism is therefore left behind in pursuit of a prey with considerably greater resonance in real-world debates about justice, historical and global. He sees this as a worthwhile project, since following through on the ‘international libertarian’ position may lead us to support redistributive proposals comparable with those espoused by many global egalitarians – with the implication that, given the widespread acceptance of the international libertarian position, even global egalitarians might find Butt's a more profitable position from which to start. The book is closely argued and takes very seriously a set of possible objections to the position defended. As well as marking a significant intervention in the debate about historic injustice, many readers will learn a good deal from the clarity with which the arguments of those sceptical about any present-day obligations based on historical injustice are dealt with.
Avery Kolers also wants us to focus more closely on an argument he regards as having been somewhat ill-served in recent debates about global justice: the nature of rights to territory. Rights to territory are something of a puzzle for Kolers, since an acceptable theory will want to tell us not only something about why we all, universally, need some kind of territory or other in order to sustain our lives, but will also need to tell us a quite particular story about why this community might have a particular right to that territory. Global egalitarians have said some interesting things in response to the first requirement, but fall at the hurdle of the second. They tend to treat territory as just one more resource that we might, for instance, have a right to equal access to, but they have not paid adequate attention to the particular forms of attachment that different communities form to particular territories. When global egalitarians have recognised (rather than properly theorised) such attachments, they tend to have treated them rather like an ‘expensive taste', with rather unpalatable consequences.
The challenge is serious, according to Kolers, because different communities relate to different territories in different ways – they have what Kolers calls different ‘ethnogeographies', each of which we will want to comprehend, and recognise, within an adequate theory. Most familiar to us is indeed the ‘liberal’ ethnogeography which treats land as a resource to be used and traded; but we have been less successful in recognising and properly valuing the different ethnogeographies of agrarian, nomadic or indigenous communities. But how can we judge between such different claims to a single or overlapping piece of territory? Here Kolers develops an intriguing version of attachment theory which focuses on communities’ sustainable ‘stewardship’ of land, and their cultivation of ‘plenitude’ within it. By contrast to earlier, colonialist doctrines which justified the displacement of indigenous peoples by reference to the fact that they were hardly inhabiting, or using, ‘their’ land at all, Kolers suggests we should place much greater weight on communities’ ability to inhabit their land sustainably. In contrast to the rather conservative tenor of some accounts of rights to territory, Kolers’ account may well have radical implications in a good number of cases.
The two books reviewed here are hugely different in some ways – for instance, while Butt's book aims carefully to develop the appropriate principles for assessing claims for rectification and tells us relatively little about the likely political outcomes, Kolers’ ‘political’ cards are always on the table, not least in his imaginative and highly unusual suggestion for a federalist solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict. But both are united in an effort to get the combatants in debates about global justice to think seriously about the nature of historical claims, and more particularly of conflicting claims to the same pieces of land or property. In that, both perform a valuable service.
Chris Armstrong
(University of Southampton)
The Mediation of Power focuses on the dissemination of power in the public sphere, which is a principal issue in today's scholarship on media and communications. Challenging the dominant theoretical paradigm of the ‘elite–mass media-audience’ (p. 6). Aeron Davis fashions a new approach conceived within a framework of ‘inverted political economy of communication’ (p. 10). This new approach posits that the existing paradigm does not sufficiently consider the complex sustenance of unequal relations of power in society by media and communications. Scholars should be looking beyond the traditional historical ‘media events'-oriented approaches to consider the mediators of power, who they are and where they reside in the power framework.
Intended as a comprehensive, triangulated account of sites of elite power, the book is aimed at higher-level undergraduates, postgraduates and media and communications scholars, and the structure correspondingly has the feel of a textbook. Each chapter addresses a particular issue in the form of a robust survey of the literature with some critical engagement, followed by an example study. The analysis draws on primary data collected by the author from 220 interviews conducted between 1998 and 2006 with representatives from the financial, political and non-governmental sectors.
Overall, the structure restricts the depth of theoretical investigation into the paradigms addressed, though the impressive breadth of information presented balances this. Primarily concerned with discourse and power, the book would also benefit from additional engagement with theories of the role of capitalism and mass communications in the decline of the public sphere, as this could further reinforce the linkages made by the author in his choice of case study.
A particular highlight is the case study of Make Poverty History as a co-opted interest group in chapter 8. Collaborating with Nick Sireau, Davis outlines the process of co-option both by the government and the media, which culminated in the misrepresentation of the group's goals and values during their 2005 campaign. On a more practical level, Appendix I serves as a very useful tool for potential researchers as the author outlines all of the methodological and research method elements involved in carrying out such a research project. Succinctly written, The Mediation of Power successfully provides its target audience with an advanced investigation of the primary domains of power in Britain – government and the economy – while simultaneously providing valuable insight into the responsibilities and structural relations between practitioners in both domains.
Lucy M. Abbott
(University of Durham)
Thérèse Delpech's work strikes a Malthusian chord as the author addresses the potential for barbarism in the twenty-first century. For those who view this century as one of endless globalised progress, it is evident that Delpech tends to view the world from the other end of the telescope. Utilising a mix of philosophy and international security, she puts forward a historical analysis of the past in order to guide policy making in the immediate future. For Delpech the savagery of the twentieth century was a product of man, or more specifically, policy makers who focused on questions of economic and political gain while ignoring a study of ethics. This lack of ethics hindered policy makers from developing their character and capacity for judgement. Accordingly, if humanity is to avoid another century of barbarism it is imperative that ethics is placed at the heart of any political rehabilitation (p. xix). In essence a dichotomy is put forward: twentieth-century policy makers were politically blind because they focused on politics and economics; twenty-first-century policy makers may become political visionaries if they re-engage with ethics and ‘the questions that have stirred humanity for centuries’ (p. 176).
Whether or not Delpech substantiates her central thesis enough to facilitate any such political rehabilitation is questionable. While the study aims to guide humanity, it is evident that the focus is primarily on Western policy making. A tension therefore emerges between the nation-state system and humanity, since any policy that aims to serve the interests of the former may not serve the interests of the latter. This tension is never really addressed and perhaps explains why the author fails to address the threat posed by climate change, which is listed just once in the index. Yet despite such criticism, the work still stands as timely and important. The inherent complexity embodied in any such study of the past, present and future is bound to present limitations. Indeed, the mere mention of a chapter devoted to an analysis of 2025 may cause concern, yet the analysis steers itself away from speculation by engaging with the past and present in order to highlight the complexities involved in managing the future. While at times the work may not provide the answers one is looking for, the focus on ethics and questions of ‘political responsibility, human freedom and the meaning of history’ (p. 176) dictates that this profound analysis provides food for thought for anyone trying to avoid another savage century.
Adrian M. Gallagher
(The University of Sheffield)
This book challenges the standard liberal notion of community. While liberals concerned about community rightly acknowledge the need for a sense of belonging together in order to uphold liberal institutions, their search for some sort of commonality is misleading, as it ultimately contradicts a core liberal assumption, namely what Rawls called the ‘fact of pluralism'. In response to this ‘theoretical puzzle’ (p. 32), Derek Edyvane sets out to develop a liberal notion of community based not on consensus but on conflict.
In many everyday life situations people who do not share common beliefs still display mutual concern, yet current theoretical accounts of community seem unable to make sense of this. Turning to literature, Edyvane tells us, and especially to fictional journey narratives, may provide new perspectives on community, as they symbolise ‘different interpretation[s] of the shape of a shared life’ (p. 56). Accordingly, a major part of the book discusses different types of journey narrative – pilgrimage, escape and quest – and how the corresponding conceptions of community deal with the initial ‘theoretical puzzle'.
The quest model (a procedural account of community), which emphasises open-endedness as against a fixed set of values (as in the pilgrimage and escape model), looks most promising, but it still lacks the motivational grounds for citizens to adhere to the respective procedures. This leads Edyvane to explore how the idea of friendship might complete such an account. Ultimately, he arrives at a conception of political friendship that is ‘basic’ (p. 131) and ‘necessarily mysterious’ (p. 167), yet which may be justified with respect to our particular beliefs by ‘a “just-so” story to be given ex post’ (p. 164) about how concern for our ‘moral adversaries’ (p. 166) – that is, fellow citizens – grew out of advocating our beliefs against theirs, or, in short, out of conflict.
This is a highly innovative book on a central theme in contemporary political theory. While its argumentation is compelling, the reader might disagree with some of the underlying assumptions or find questions unanswered. The examples of mutual concern, for instance – donating blood, holding open doors for strangers or smiling at each other – might be thought an inadequate indicator of political friendship. Also, one might ask what community based on conflict implies in terms of membership, of who's in and who's out? Yet disagreement about such issues is not surprising, and this book is definitely well worth reading, not only for liberal advocates of community, but for everyone interested in the socio-moral foundations of modern society.
Andreas Busen
(University of Hamburg)
Justice in a Changing World introduces central questions that have shaped the debate on social justice since the publication of Rawls’ Theory of Justice. These questions involve the scope of justice. That is, to whom should social justice apply, since the implicit assumption that justice applies only to fellow contemporary citizens is increasingly being challenged. In light of the pressures of multiculturalism, globalisation and consideration for past and future generations, which have expanded our considerations of justice both spatially and temporally, Cécile Fabre examines the following six topics: justice between generations; justice between cultural groups; national self-determination and territorial justice; justice between foreigners; immigration; and reparations for past injustices.
Over six chapters each of these topics is skilfully presented through the lenses of three dominant theories of social justice in contemporary political theory: liberal egalitarianism, communitarianism and libertarianism. The first chapter sets the stage by clearly and succinctly presenting the main debates in Rawls’ theory of justice as the basis of egalitarian liberal theories, as well as the communitarian and libertarian positions that arise as responses against it. The organisation of each topic into these three perspectives provides a balanced account of recent disputes, and is a helpful way of distinguishing and clarifying the contentions among various claims, while presenting the arguments of significant theorists on each topic.
In addition, the book is a remarkably engaged introduction of cutting-edge theoretical debates on social justice which demonstrates how normative arguments in political theory engage with pressing issues in contemporary politics. For instance, chapters 5 and 6 examine the hotly debated issues of global redistributive justice and immigration, respectively. The question here concerns the moral significance of borders in considering matters of social justice; that is, whether justice demands that peoples of wealthy countries transfer part of their wealth to peoples of poorer ones, or whether states are justified in closing their borders to potential immigrants. Fabre shows that both debates depend on how we weigh the demands of fellow community members and those of outsiders.
Fabre succeeds in bringing out the nuances and complexities of each issue, helpfully guiding the reader through the debate but showing that there is no easy answer. This is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to learn more about the subject.
Chikako Endo
(Keio University, Tokyo)
This book on one of the most famous sociologists of all time includes 21 classic essays published during the past 70 years. This collection introduces the reader to the issues and controversies raised by Pareto's social and political thought. In the introduction Joseph Femia explains the importance of the essays. All of them are written by distinguished experts in the field and outline Pareto's main sociological theories and ideas.
Pareto's most important theories and propositions include the following. First, every society consists of a minority elite governing the population. Second, modern liberal democratic systems also comprise a governing elite which strives to maintain power through the persuasion, manipulation and indoctrination of the masses. Third, the theory of the circulation of elites (political elites succeeding each other through both conflict and compromise) applies to modern liberal democracies as well. Fourth, social phenomena are not caused by any single factor but by a number of factors that influence each other reciprocally. Fifth, social phenomena recur in cycles. All of these important propositions are analysed fully by the contributors of the essays, who analyse Pareto's thought from their respective fields such as sociology, political science, history and economics.
All of the essays are truly exceptional. Norberto Bobbio's ‘Introduction to Pareto's Sociology’ is an excellent essay that details Pareto's famous circulation of the elites as well as other theoretical contributions. Alessandro Pizzorno's essay ‘Vilfredo Pareto and the Crisis of Nineteenth Century Science’ deals with Pareto's critique of liberal democratic systems. S. E. Finer's essay ‘Pareto and Pluto-democracy’ also deals with Pareto's theory of elite politics and demagogical behaviour. Each of the contributors strives to show the diverse and all-encompassing nature of Pareto's work.
Pareto argued that pure democracy was an illusion and that a ruling class has and will always emerge within any type of political system. For holding this position Pareto was considered by many liberal theorists, such as Karl Popper, for example, as a scholar who supported authoritarian government. But this is very far from the truth. In fact, even if Pareto was suspicious of positivistic rational schemes for human improvement, he never embraced or endorsed authoritarian politics. He remained an independent thinker even in the face of difficult social and political circumstances; a thinker who was deeply suspicious of the myths and rhetoric underpinning modern liberal democratic political systems.
This book is an excellent contribution to understanding Pareto's thought and it will be of great interest to all students of politics, philosophy and sociology.
Paolo Morisi
(Independent Scholar)
Discretionary Time: A New Measure of Freedom is an interesting work of theory and policy. The guiding assumption is that welfare can be measured according to ‘discretionary time', the amount of time individuals actually control. Indeed, the suggestion is insightful, since discretionary time differs from ‘spare time’ as the time individuals possess after meeting basic needs. The distinction is subtle but significant: discretionary time characterises time spent on activities beyond what is minimally necessary as the result of choice (a reflection of ‘temporal autonomy’), not as a residual resource (i.e. ‘spare’ time). Accordingly, the authors address the perception of ‘time pressure', and distinguish the effects of regime types, welfare systems and household forms upon well-being. The analysis includes: an indication of how temporal autonomy relates to moral autonomy; a brief overview of how welfare laws reflect regime types; a discussion of how temporal autonomy can be operationalised; and consideration of political consequences. There is much here for both political theorists and political scientists, as the argument moves from the normative to the factual. One of the work's strengths is that it challenges the presumption that normative theory is insulated from empirical examination, for the discussion assumes that normative claims require verification while empirical studies need normative orientation. This alone distinguishes Discretionary Time as a notable work.
Despite the text's strengths there remain parts that give one pause. Some conclusions are unsurprising (single mothers are the most pressed for time, while dual-earning couples without children have the most discretionary time), while the political implications seem slightly under-argued. Why is temporal autonomy a specifically political problem? And why should the difficulties of certain groups concern the rest of society? The answers are assumed at times, rather than fully argued. As the authors note, regime type is less influential than lifestyle choices. But this potentially complicates the main thrust of the argument, which is that governments can influence positively the amount of discretionary time individuals possess. That may be so, but the observation itself intimates that governments have a negligible role to play. A bit more needs to be said to justify why discretionary time should be treated as a political issue. Nonetheless, Discretionary Time is worthy of consideration, for whatever the difficulties, the attempt to render the idea of autonomy more determinate by measuring the amount of time individuals control is a striking endeavour, and one that bears more than a cursory read.
Jason Ferrell
(McGill University)
In recent years, scholars have been paying increasing attention to the ideas of Thomas Hobbes on religion and church–state relations. Much of what Hobbes wrote on these matters is readily available in English – for instance Behemoth, the last two parts of the English Leviathan and translations of relevant sections of De Cive and of the Latin Leviathan. But one important work by Hobbes has until now been accessible only in its Latin verse original. This is the Historia Ecclesiastica, a Latin poem of over 2,200 lines, which Hobbes completed by 1671. The poem charts the history of the ambitions and frauds of priests and philosophers from ancient times through the era of early Christianity and the rise of papal power to the advent of Lutheranism, at which point the Pope began to lose power. The poem tells us much about Hobbes’ views on the history of philosophy and religion, and adds many details to the ideas he presents in Leviathan and elsewhere.
This new edition makes available the Latin text together with an English translation. It is an important contribution to modern scholarship on Hobbes, and deserves a wide readership among scholars and students interested in Hobbes’ ideas on religion, church–state relations and intellectual history. The text follows the original printed edition of 1688 but records variants in the three surviving (and inferior) manuscripts of the work. The transcription of the text seems generally to be accurate, though some errors have crept in (for example, on p. 472 ‘innocuus’ has been changed to ‘innocuous’). The translation is mostly clear and accurate, though again some mistakes are present (for instance, at p. 518 ‘Rex Chilpericus, stupidus cognomine’ is rendered as ‘King Chilperic, as stupid as his name suggests’ but it means ‘King Chilperic, surnamed the stupid’). The introduction and footnotes to this edition contain a mass of information, but need to be used with some caution as they incorporate a number of errors of varying degrees of significance. Particularly striking is the claim that Hobbes had a ‘life-long antipathy to government by bishops, whether Laudian or Presbyterian’ (p. 49). Hobbes had an antipathy to claims by all clerics – and not just bishops – to divine rights independent of the state, but he was perfectly happy with bishops who acknowledged that their authority stemmed from the sovereign. Presbyterians had no bishops; it was they, and not Hobbes, who were antipathetic to episcopacy.
Johann Sommerville
(University of Wisconsin, Madison)
As its name suggests, the fundamental argument of this book is to prove that the libertarian view is simply an illusion. According to the author, this is because, firstly, libertarian public policies have not achieved their promised results and therefore have failed. Secondly, the ideological objectives of libertarian policy proposals are mostly hidden, just like the iceberg depicted in the cover design of the book. Finally, libertarian America leaves its citizens on their own without government help or solidarity of the people. The theoretical assumption behind these arguments is that the free market based on an invisible hand without government regulation is destined to fail. The approach adopted by William Hudson is that of communitarianism, which promotes the common good as a central moral value, and is positioned in contrast to libertarianism. Hudson focuses on the following five public policy issues in America: taxation and spending; deregulation; social security; health care; and abortion and euthanasia. After providing a historical account of these five policy areas, the author outlines the libertarian solutions and then presents his critiques. Finally, communitarian policy proposals take the floor.
Although the book begins with the confrontation between libertarianism and communitarianism, it ends with a sort of pragmatism that rejects ideological rigidity. Despite the apparent contrast adopted by the book, it does not close the door on ‘in-between’ policies, provided that communitarian values and ends are accepted in advance. However, an elaborated reconciliation effort between the communitarian approach and pragmatism/utilitarianism is needed; otherwise this may pave the way for ‘thinning’ the ‘thick’ conception of the common good.
Another problem is that the author considers only deregulatory policies for the libertarian approach, and argues that regulation is required for the communitarian view. However, since 2000 in particular, regulatory policies have been fashionable within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as prescriptions for the proper functioning of the market economy, but not for the promotion of the common good. Therefore, the book should have provided a discussion to differentiate market-oriented regulatory policies from those of communitarianism, associated with the public interest.
Apart from these minor concerns, Hudson successfully criticises the libertarian view, supports the communitarian position and presents communitarianism as a plausible public policy alternative. Although the book is mainly aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, it is a useful read for anyone interested in the policy issues concerned.
Hasan Engin Sener
(Akdeniz University, Turkey)
This book comprises an edited collection of essays that assess the Gramscian and neo-Gramscian tradition in light of contemporary global politics. The introduction provides a context that explains why key Gramscian concepts including hegemony, historic bloc, the national-popular and trasformismo have relevance in the twenty-first century. The book covers a wide range of disciplines from international relations and international political economy to gender and feminism. Chapter 3 also considers deeper philosophical and epistemological questions concerning reason, truth and objectivity. The collection brings together research that applies Gramscian thought to the broad international arena and the current state of the new world order, as well as presenting specific national case studies in Britain, Israel and Turkey. This book will be very useful for academics and graduate scholars of cultural, political and social theory wanting to learn about the latest research on Gramscian schools of thought.
The book is organised in three main parts. The first part deals with ‘Gramsci and the new world order'. First it considers the use and application of the neo-Gramscian concept of ‘transnational historical materialism’ and its contemporary relevance. The next chapter analyses the development of and tensions between realist and idealist scholars. Ideas of reality, objectivity, social constructionism and postmodernism are interrogated. Chapters 4 and 5 apply the Gramscian concepts of trasformismo and counter-hegemony to the recent waves of protests against global political institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the G8, which are part of the neo-liberal historic bloc. These chapters are particularly important since they remedy the lack of research by political theorists and scientists on the ‘alternative globalisation movement’ and extra-parliamentary resistance in general. Further, they demonstrate how Gramscian ideas are synonymous with resistance, which is sometimes overlooked in the broad discipline of politics.
The next section considers political theoretical questions concerning agency, gender and civil society. Gramscian perspectives are applied to Turkish civil society and counter-hegemony in Israel. The final section ends with an update on Gramscian applications to Britain by providing a critique of New Labour and Giddens’ Third Way. Devine and Purdy in chapter 12 provide an excellent summing up of this section by arguing that New Labour has continued and consolidated the Thatcherite project.
The essays in this book are lucid and cohesive throughout and demonstrate the enduring importance of (re-)applying Gramsci's ideas to both national and international contexts.
Yousaf Ibrahim
(University of Manchester)
As Martin McQuillan rightly notes in the introduction to this edited volume, central to Derrida's understanding of the political is the idea of ‘to come’ (à venir). Thus Derrida talks of a democracy to come, which cannot be reduced to any present instantiation of democracy or even to any democracy that would be realisable in the future. Understood in this way, democracy to come is of the future and is a promise that will never be cashed in. This may lead one to think that Derrida has not got anything to say about politics in the here and now, but one can also see the idea of, for instance, democracy to come as a sort of hypercritical way of questioning any claim to have realised democracy in the world today (as also argued by Robert Bernasconi in his contribution). Understood in this way, democracy to come is excessive and expresses the ability of democracy to put itself into question. What is more, during the last years of his life, Derrida addressed what he (and McQuillan) calls the ‘mutations’ of the political, for instance globalisation and the new de-territorialised terrorism. One must then consider whether these mutations should change the way we think about political concepts such as sovereignty.
This volume originates in a conference on ‘Deconstruction Reading Politics’ in 1999. Apart from Martin McQuillan's introduction, the book contains thirteen chapters of varying quality. Although none of them is path breaking, there are good contributions by Geoffrey Bennington, Derek Attridge, Robert Bernasconi and Claire Colebrook. Bennington uses Derrida's democracy to come to analyse the place of democracy in relation to other regimes in Plato and Aristotle; Attridge argues that politics should not be reduced to the art of the possible as if politics were merely a matter of applying a technique; Bernasconi argues for deconstruction as a sort of hyper-politicisation that continually puts our received concepts and institutions into question; and Colebrook uses Derrida to make the case that the determination of what is a relevant context is itself a political act. There is also a short but insightful essay by Andrew Parker on Jacques Rancière, but it is not clear what it is doing in a volume on Derrida and deconstruction. The chapters are all quite philosophical in tone, and the volume will mainly appeal to those already familiar with Derrida's thought.
Lasse Thomassen
(Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies, Madrid)
Raymon Aron once formulated probably the most devastating critique of Vilfredo Pareto's work. In his excellent lecture series on sociological thinkers he remarked that ‘one does not dare say that [Pareto's ideas] are false, but perhaps they are not very instructive'. Alasdair Marshall is acutely aware of Aron's ruinous verdict, and yet he wants to rebuild Pareto's reputation, and not just for current sociology.
The main contention of this book is that Pareto's sociological framework can be usefully employed in political psychology. The main argument is that ‘patterned distributions of individual psychological characteristics endure within political elites’ (p. 42). The narrative then performs some sort of methodological dance to prove this: Marshall outlines Pareto's main ideas and argues that they are very close to models and theories by other authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century. The method is proof by association or approximation. In the final chapter, the author also reports the findings of an empirical study. The study surveyed the attitudes of members of parliament (1999) to, among other things, risk, leadership and innovation to tease out ‘enduring personality structures’ (p. 169) that align with political parties. Not surprisingly for self-reporting studies, the findings confirm what we always suspected: conservatives are ‘risk-averse and poorly endowed with creative ability; liberals tend to have a stronger appetite for risk and are more creative’ (p. 191). While the author takes great care to offer sophisticated interpretations of these data and usually avoids stereotypical pitfalls, his conclusions do seem particularly soothing to the liberal respondents (which include members of the Labour party). However, the main point remains unproven: that Pareto's sociological framework is the right tool with which to analyse political attitudes.
The book is aimed at postgraduates and academics with an interest in sociology and political psychology, but it suffers from two problems. First, Pareto's work explicitly avoided psychological theories and models; his main argument was that non-logical human behaviour can be explored within the categories of modern sociology. Alasdair Marshall's contention that Pareto's ‘psychological intuitions contain surprising insights’ (p. 81) is too thin to convince me of their heuristic usefulness for the field of political psychology. The second problem is the author's reliance on behaviouralist theories from the 1960s and 1970s – psychology offers better models and psychometric instruments today. For in all honesty, who still thinks that Conservatives are dumb and backward looking (my phrasing), while Labour and Liberals are innovative and risk taking?
Axel Kaehne
(Cardiff University)
One of the most celebrated political thinkers of the twentieth century, Michael Oakeshott, is sometimes depicted as a conservative, sometimes as a liberal, sometimes as a sceptic and sometimes as an idealist. The Democratic Theory of Michael Oakeshott by Michael Minch is the latest in the series on Oakeshott published by Imprint Academic. Minch focuses on elements in Oakeshott's thought of individuality, agency, contingency and civil association as purposeless association, and views Oakeshott as a democratic theorist with links to deliberative and discursive theorists of democracy as varied as Rawls, Habermas, Dryzek and Gutmann and Thompson.
Minch identifies elements in Oakeshott's thought both before On Human Conduct and within that work, which reflect a concern with democratic politics. Prior to On Human Conduct, such elements are scattered and imprecise but clearly present. In On Human Conduct, notions of agency, individuality, contingency and civil association suggest a sympathy for democratic politics. Human nature, for Oakeshott, is primarily a product of a history of individuals exercising deliberation and agency in the face of contingent circumstance. Oakeshott suggests that politics should take a form closer to civil association in which its preordained purpose is minimal, in contrast to enterprise association in which some shared purpose is assumed. Minch sees affinities between the requirement that actions be defensible and approaches to democratic theory that emphasise that authority should always be justifiable. Other commentators (for example Glenn Worthington and Elizabeth Campbell Corey) have focused on references in Oakeshott to language, poetry and conversation in order to draw out elements of Oakeshott's thought concerned with religion and aesthetics; Minch cites such references to make a case that Oakeshott should be viewed as a profound democratic theorist with close affinities to deliberative and discursive theories of democracy.
Minch has written an interesting work. In the first half of the book he makes a persuasive case that Oakeshott does consider issues of democratic theory and does make a genuine contribution. However, it is more difficult to know what to say about the second half of the book in which Minch seeks to link Oakeshott with a group of thinkers as diverse as Rawls, Habermas, Dryzek and Gutmann and Thompson. Here Minch is more provocative than persuasive. Oakeshott clearly did view democratic politics as being inherently about conversation and this does suggest affinities with certain other thinkers. However, whether one can situate his thought as part of a deliberative school of democratic theory embracing such a diverse range of thinkers may – depending on how it is viewed – represent either an ambitious claim or a trivial one, if one considers it in terms of the lowest common denominators that link such a group. Perhaps Minch is correct, but he fails to convince. Nevertheless, Oakeshott scholars will find the argument in this book well worth reading, and it will no doubt inspire discussion, whether in the form of challenging his argument or of identifying more precisely the affinities he suggests.
James G. Mellon
(Independent Scholar)
The purpose of these two volumes is to gather together some of the most important twentieth-century essays written on the political thought of, respectively, Rousseau and Hobbes. Each contains a commendably concise summary of both the thinker in question and the treatments of them that follow. In turn, each of the 37 essays – 14 in Rousseau, 23 in Hobbes – is not only unabridged, but also preserved in its original formatting with original page numbers.
This stated purpose, to collect together the most important essays on both thinkers, is a purpose interpreted rather differently by each editor. Timothy O'Hagan appears to have taken his main remit to be that of assembling some of the best attempts made in recent times to ‘make sense’ of Rousseau's political thought or, more precisely, to render coherent all those various paradoxes that seem to arise from a careful reading of the same. Gabriella Slomp's volume, by contrast, despite beginning with three essays that seek to get some kind of analytical handle on Hobbes’ political thought as a whole, is mainly composed of (a) pieces that seek to contextualise that thought and (b) pieces that explore some or other smaller aspect of it, for example rhetoric, religion, international relations, etc. In part, this emphasis is a result of the general trajectory of twentieth-century engagements with Hobbes – a trajectory that runs away from grand attempts at systematic interpretations of his thought as a whole, or even his political thought as a whole, and towards a more fragmented and, in particular, more contextualised approach. In larger part though, and as noted in a fine introduction, it is the result of a deliberate effort by Slomp to capture that same trend.
This difference in interpretation has at least one important pedagogic implication: for any given student possessed of a single interest in both thinkers, the two collections are unlikely to be of equal value. For instance, any undergraduate or junior graduate encountering Hobbes and Rousseau for the first time is going to find O'Hagan's volume considerably more helpful when it comes to that initial challenge of ‘making sense’ of one's subject. Students struggling to understand, for example, just how it might be possible to be ‘forced to be free’ will find the essays by Jones, Wokler and Neuhouser of enormous use. By contrast, Slomp's volume, and in particular the essays it includes by Oakeshott, Schlatter, Bobbio and Skinner, is going to be of much greater use to any historically minded graduate whose task is to try and understand the particular intellectual contexts from within which the Leviathan and Social Contract arose.
To say, however, that the two volumes serve different ends is not to say that they are incommensurable. While there is little one can say in objection to the essays either included or excluded by O'Hagan, Slomp's collection contains several essays of dubious relevance – the piece by Richard Tuck, for instance, has almost nothing to do with Hobbes and everything to do with Grotius – and is much too light on analytical/critical treatments of her subject, despite containing nine more essays.
From a research perspective, in contrast, there is little to choose between the two. Although neither is going to set the world alight – remember, this is all previously published material – at least three interesting thoughts are prompted by the general character of each set of essays. First, one soon gets the impression that there are almost as many interpretations of these two canonical stalwarts as there have been influential ‘isms’ in twentieth-century political thought – liberal, republican, totalitarian, contractarian, utilitarian, etc. Second, one begins to wonder just when the list of influences and contexts necessary to ‘understand’ Hobbes is going to stop growing – Thucydides, Grotius, natural law, scholasticism, natural science, classical rhetoric, and so on and so forth. Third, one cannot help but muse as to whether the characters of these two volumes would be more than a little reversed in a world in which Quentin Skinner had chosen not the earlier realist but the later republican as one of his principal subjects.
Putting all of that aside though, it is, I think, from the point of view of postgraduate research that these volumes really earn their salt. For any young scholar contemplating future research on Hobbes or Rousseau, either volume would be an excellent first port of call. Although, as noted, Slomp's compilation is considerably less useful when it comes to first-time encounters, both would be excellent sourcebooks of inspiration for any student trying to establish just what one could still feasibly do, research-wise, with either thinker. Ultimately then, given both their cost and the fact that their contents are already published, it is this use, and not their value as teaching aids or illuminating distillations of each body of scholarship, that really ought to earn them a place in every well-stocked university library.
Jonathan Floyd
(University of Oxford)
Political Theology II is the latest translation of Carl Schmitt's work to emerge in the English language and the last major book of his oeuvre. Given the almost incredible resurgence of interest in his texts over the better part of ten years, the translation of Political Theology II will interest a wide range of scholars.
While Schmitt published Political Theology in 1922 to grapple with questions of sovereignty, jurisprudence and their origins in theological concepts, Political Theology II is more firmly concerned with the legacy and importance of political theology as such. Here Schmitt focuses his attention on answering the charges of the German theologian Erik Peterson, who published in 1935 what Schmitt refers to as an attempted ‘theological closure: a closure of any political theology’ (p. 35). Peterson dismissed the idea of a structural link between Christian theology and political reality, instead arguing that Augustine delegitimised the notion of an imperial religion for the Roman state by separating both theological and political questions. For Schmitt, Peterson's thesis was fundamentally an attempt to neutralise the political as such. As he writes toward the conclusion: ‘The theologian can reasonably declare the closure of issues of political significance only by establishing himself as a political voice which makes political claims’ (p. 113).
Schmitt essentially returns to the fundamental question that has guided his work: quis judicabit (who is to decide?). At a moment in crisis, who is to decide the boundary of what is a theological or political question? Political Theology II was originally published in 1969 and had as a background concern the Second Vatican Council and its redefinition of the nexus between religion and the state, which provoked contentious debates among German theologians at the time. More importantly, however, Schmitt argues that this central question of who decides has to be a manifestation of political theology, which was central to interpreting Hobbes. In a postscript, Schmitt answers the claims of Hans Blumenberg, who in his famous book The Legitimacy of the Modern Age argued against Schmitt's claim of 1922 that modernity rested upon the secularisation of theological concepts. First Schmitt disputes Blumenberg's appropriation of the concept of legitimacy, a juridical concept, to describe the uniqueness of the modern age when legality should have been the norm. More importantly, Schmitt argues somewhat caustically, is that Blumenberg's construction of modernity is a nihilistic world that completely rewrites itself and can only legitimise itself through the destruction of the old. The importance of this text lies not simply in the arguments herein, important as they are, but especially as an additional means of situating some of the central concerns that continuously provoked Schmitt's writings.
Alexander D. Barder
(Johns Hopkins University)
This collection edited by Paul Sigmund is a student edition which brings together an unprecedented range of works by and on John Locke. It is the only edition of its kind to include alongside Locke's two major political works – ‘The Two Treatises of Government’ (The First Treatise in part) and ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration’ – selections from Locke's ethical, epistemological and religious writings that underwrite his politics (‘Essays on the Law of Nature', ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ and ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’). The collection also provides a number of extracts from sources that had an impact on Locke (e.g. Hooker, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf and Filmer). Most notably, it features 21 excerpts from selected publications on ten modern interpretations of Locke. Finally, the editor's introduction complements all this with a concise biography and a comprehensive survey of the reception of Locke, focusing particularly on the last 50 years.
The aims of this collection are twofold: first, to help students arrive at a clearer sense of Locke's intentions in writing what he wrote and the significance his works bore for his later readers; and second, to encourage us to consider the contemporary implications of his principles.
The Selected Political Writings of John Locke offers an invaluable starting point for both these purposes. For example, the version of the Letter in this edition indicates where and how William Popple's English translation deviates from Locke's original Latin text, which is useful to enable modern readers unfamiliar with Latin to approach Locke's own sense in this text. Moreover, the introduction prompts discussion about Locke's relevance by skilfully highlighting issues he addressed that are still central to politics today. For example, it shows that on a theological reading of his writings, Locke believed, like many liberals, that liberalism must have a broader moral foundation than self-interest. The question for us is whether this foundation must indeed be religious as he suggests.
However, ironically the collection undermines its principal aim of facilitating a ‘more thorough and accurate understanding’ (p. xxxix) of Locke by trying to include too much material within a single volume. This results in it being overloaded with extracts. Regardless of whether they are carefully chosen or not, extracts are characteristically partial and patronising (somewhat resembling a leading question), which renders it difficult for students not only to evaluate fairly the interpretations but also to achieve novel readings of Locke.
While this collection may be too sketchy for specialised students who want more than to familiarise themselves with Locke's thought and scholarship, it offers students new to Locke a handy entry point into the rather intimidating ‘Locke industry'.
J.K. Numao
(Keio University, Japan)
Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism constitutes a summary of Anthony Smith's theoretical work in the field of nationalism studies since the mid-1980s. He begins by tackling the modernist view that nations did not really exist as such before the eighteenth century, arguing that modernism narrowly focuses upon material over symbolic resources, ignores the long-term antecedents of nations, omits ethnic phenomena, ascribes too little agency to non-elites and ‘tends to simplify or omit the cultural and psychological consequences of protracted rivalries, and especially the internal tensions created by competing definitions and mythologies of the nation’ (p. 20). Ethno-symbolists, by contrast, emphasise the double historicity of nations – ‘their embeddedness in very specific historical contexts and situations, and their rootedness in the memories and traditions of their members’ (p. 30) – which is vitally important for understanding how riven with conflict most nationalisms are, given the various cultural narratives vying for supremacy.
Indeed, ethno-symbolists see nations as being repeatedly formed and reformed, in part, ‘on the basis of the symbolic processes of ethno-genesis’ (p. 49), and therefore they regulate nationalists to reshaping ‘the present state of the community through a reinterpretation of its past or pasts’ to the point where symbolic processes converge with social and political reality ‘to create the possibility of a national form of community’ (p. 66). Smith describes nationalism as a religion of the people complete with its own sacred history, rituals and observances, shrines and myth of election, as well as the myth memories of ‘golden ages', which reveal for later generations the true genius and essence of the nation, though competing or successive ‘golden ages’ also reveal the internal conflict that goes into the making of a nation.
Smith devotes his last chapter to some of the criticisms levelled against his ethno-symbolist approach, presenting it as a means of bridging the classical views of nationalism ‘with their emphasis on history and causality’ and more modern departures ‘which focus on multi-cultural, gendered national identities and contemporary popular attitudes and beliefs’ (p. 136). His work easily fits alongside that of other noteworthy scholars such as Marc Howard Ross, who has explored how psycho-cultural narratives drive ethnic conflict, and Henry E. Hale, who has recently described how nations arise at the nexus of ethnicity and the collective desire to maximise life chances. Smith's slim volume provides both the perfect introduction to his ethno-symbolist approach and a convincing account of the formation of nations and the role of nationalism.
Guy Lancaster
(Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture)
In Intimations Pursued: The Voice of Practice in the Conversation of Michael Oakeshott, Andrew Sullivan offers a crisp introduction to Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy. Among other things, he dwells on Oakeshott's distinction between civil association and enterprise association. A civil association provides a modest, rule-based, politico-legal framework within which individuals pursue their chosen plans. By contrast, an enterprise association involves the pursuit of some ideal or end-state (e.g. social justice). Moreover, it is a model of human association within which the notion of individualism dwindles in significance. While Sullivan throws light on the distinction between civil and enterprise association and many other features of Oakeshott's thinking, his book has a larger purpose. He seeks to provide support for the claim that Oakeshott's early writings on religion are central to an understanding of his political philosophy.
To this end, Sullivan notes a number of features of religious thought on which Oakeshott placed emphasis. Oakeshott argued that, while religion seeks to state non-local (or universal) truths, this is exclusively a matter for philosophy. But while religion cannot, according to Oakeshott, deliver universal truths, it is a practice with enormous practical significance. For it invests the lives of believers with meaning. Moreover, it does so with an intensity that is unavailable in any other practice. Thus it is a phenomenological (if not an ontological) success.
But while Oakeshott draws a sharp distinction between philosophy and religion, Sullivan identifies his thinking as ambiguous. For those who practise a religious faith find within it intimations or glimpses of non-local truth. This invites the charge of incoherence (since Oakeshott insisted that we must look to philosophy for universal truth). But while this feature of Oakeshott's thinking leaves him exposed to criticism, it has, as Sullivan notes, many virtues. For example, Oakeshott is able to explain why believers exhibit grace. This is because they choose to invest their lives with meaning rather than contemplating the abyssal prospect of a world without meaning. Sullivan might have probed this feature of Oakeshott's thinking by drawing on John Keats’ notion of ‘negative capability'. Those who exhibit this capacity live with ‘doubts', ‘uncertainties’ and ‘mysteries’ rather than hastily ‘reaching after fact and reason'. This response to life's mysteries is at least as gracious as that described by Oakeshott. Moreover, it requires mental discipline of a sort that Oakeshott ascribed to those who live within his favoured (civil) model of human association.
Richard Mullender
(Newcastle Law School)
This book explores the impassioned friendship and explosive fallout of two of the eighteenth century's most important philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. Aside from recounting a compelling story, the aim is to subject one of the Enlightenment's key articles of faith to critique, as Hume and Rousseau ‘were and remain our most important critics of reason’ (p. 6). Moreover, the quarrel poses questions about the relationship between what one thinks and how one lives. Modern philosophy is often little more than an academic pursuit, thus Robert Zaretsky and John Scott suggest that much may be learned from those who lived by their principles and regarded philosophy as a way of life.
Intellectual biographies of the key protagonists (and Voltaire too for good measure) provide the context for the quarrel, in each case related via encounters with James Boswell. From a commanding acquaintance with Enlightenment correspondence, the authors weave together an accomplished narrative that is lucid, entertaining and engaging, even if much of it covers familiar ground. The book is at its most insightful when considering the quarrel itself, which is represented as a deeply philosophical misunderstanding. Both philosophers questioned reason, yet their ideas on human understanding could not have diverged more. Consequently, Hume failed to comprehend Rousseau's attack on him because he held that ‘understanding was possible only by reducing experience to its separate elements', whereas Rousseau's judgement rested ‘on reasons the heart alone can know’ (p. 152).
This novel interpretative framework elucidates the extent to which both thinkers lived according to their philosophical principles. Ironically, Hume's reasonableness sees him generally cast in a better light than Rousseau, while surprisingly it is le bon David – and not the great autobiographer – who appears most concerned with his reputation in the quarrel's aftermath. The danger of such an approach is that the reader may be tempted to judge the philosophy by the philosopher, and the claim that Rousseau and Hume offer the best critiques of reason is never substantiated in depth. Hume's critique is well known, but Rousseau's is often overlooked and here a more penetrating analysis would have been welcome, not least to confute the proto-Kantian interpretations of Rousseau that abound. To this extent the only real shortcoming is the book's ambition. Yet this detracts little from the authors’ success in providing both a clear and compelling narrative and an intriguing interpretation of one of the most captivating encounters in Enlightenment history.
Robin Douglass
(University of Exeter)
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